To understand what your own body is doing you need to get to grips with
it. I have mentioned before that I knew that the migraines that I was getting
around the age of 43 to 47/48 were cyclical. This was because I was tracking
them on this app. I could see that they appeared usually on Day 17. My average
cycle at that age was about 26 days. I have recently learnt a bit more about
this (read Part 3: July – September, where I’ll go into more detail).
I remember having a conversation with a colleague about hip and knee
pain in my mid-40s, which I had; she also had them and had been advised by her
doctor that the aches and pains she had were just down to getting older,
something that I accepted too. This is correct but what I have come to realise
is that these aches and pains become more as our oestrogen levels drop. Another
of those ‘flags’ that I hadn’t realised were perimenopause related.
In April, I was muddling through. Coping with ‘spotting’ but also still
with the knowledge that things weren’t right. Doing my own research, I realised
that I was still missing a piece of the jigsaw. Another hormone, testosterone. Now, I should
have known this! Ask anyone of my female friends who knew me in my early to mid-forties, and
they would tell you that there were lots of aspects of my life where I thought, and maybe behaved (!) like a man! We go back to the things that we don’t talk about, or skirt around. One being libido. For some a lack of libido may not be a problem, but for me it was, and
is! Again, there are several other things that I have since established but I’ll
keep them in order, and you’ll read about them in a future post.
I knew that I needed to go back to my GP. I have found a young, female
doctor in the practice that had gained some extra knowledge on perimenopause
and menopause and was prepared to listen to me and offer HRT. I have therefore
wanted to see her as much as possible. I called to make an appointment at the
beginning of May and due to holiday and the accessibility of pre-bookable
appointments I couldn’t get an appointment until 18 May, but I suppose that’s
what you get when you are only prepared to see one doctor!
I knew that the chat with the doctor was not going to be an easy one;
she asked how I was getting along with the HRT, which allowed me to broach the
subject of testosterone. I cannot even describe her face; she was shocked that
I was even asking this. Davina McCall’s second programme; Sex, Myths and the
Menopause, had aired on 12 May. My lovely, young doctor went on to say something
to the effect of ‘Davina has a lot to answer to’. Now, although I had told a
couple of people about this second programme I had not, at that point, watched
it myself and bear in mind that I had made the appointment at the beginning of
May! I told the doctor this. She then said that testosterone is not licenced,
for women, in the UK. Something that I also knew. As I said, I knew that the
appointment was not going to be easy, but I had seen that some women were
getting testosterone on the NHS. This was not going to be the case for me!
I had steeled myself for the fact that I was going to have to go down
the private medicine route, but where do you start? As I have mentioned in Part 1, I am very aware of Dr Louise Newson but also aware that her private
practice is in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. Due to the amount of media
attention that she has gained her clinic is busy. The likelihood of getting an
appointment with her is slim, and there is a waiting list to see any of the
other specialists in the clinic. I know that the appointments are over the
phone for those who are not close by. I wanted to physically see a specialist.
I asked my doctor for some advice on this, and she advised me to go to
the British Menopause Society (BMS) website.
I’d never heard of them but then it is aimed at healthcare professionals. The
beauty of the sight, from a lay person’s point of view, is that it allows you
to search for a BMS menopause specialist. As the site says ‘A BMS menopause
specialist is a healthcare professional who holds a recognised menopause educational
qualification’; all of which can be seen on their website.
My GP did
suggest a menopause specialist who was based in the Norwich area. Having left
the appointment, I went back to work and started searching on Google! I did
find the Norwich based specialist but then used the BMS website and found a
specialist literally 12 miles from home, EveryWoman Health in Huntingdon.
I went straight to the website, read everything about the specialist, Dr Glenys Quartey-Irwin (I'll call her Dr Glenys from now on, as it's just easier!) and established that the clinic had only been open since the
beginning of the year. After a discussion with my husband, I decided to book an
appointment. The first one available was 12 July, 8 weeks ahead. Dr Glenys only runs her clinic two days a week, so it was what it was. As part of the
appointment process, I completed 2 online questionnaires; it was all really straightforward
to do. There was obviously a cost to booking the appointment, but it was
something that I was prepared to do. Her fees are readily available to see on
her website.
On Saturday 21 May I received an email from Dr Glenys asking me
to complete a questionnaire. When I booked the appointment, I hadn’t used my
middle name (which isn’t actually my middle name; that’s another story!) but
when I completed the form I had. Once I’d told her that I had already completed
one she told me that the system had seen that I was two different people. She
sorted this and then came back to me and advised that as I was already on HRT
that I should have some blood tests before my appointment. This would allow her
to have all the information that she would need prior to us meeting.
I paid for the blood tests, then called the company who facilitated this on the Monday and booked the blood tests two weeks before my appointment, so the end of June. This was to make sure that the results would be with the doctor by the time of my appointment. All I had to do now was to wait for the blood test appointment and then the specialist appointment.
On Friday 24 June, we went to a performance of Romeo and Juliet at The George Hotel, in Huntingdon. We'd been invited by our accountants. What started off as a lovely evening with a buffet meal at their office and then a sedate walk down to the hotel to watch the play turned into a nightmare! What happened is the tale of a 'Hollywood' script and deserves to have a blog post on it's own, so I will give it one!
A spa weekend away with my best friend, at Aqua Sana, was a fantastic way to get over the excitement of the previous evening, spend time with her; an early 40th birthday present, and just relax before another hectic week!
On Tuesday 28 June I had my blood tests, I could tell a tale here, but I’m not going to. Let’s just say that something that should have been so simple ended up being a farce! The following day I received an email from Dr Glenys with the results. Although there was a partial explanation, what I read concerned me. I was apprehensive that what I was reading meant that what I was feeling was going to be diminished by the blood test results. Obviously, I’m no doctor or a specialist, so I’d just have to wait until my appointment. Easier to say than do!
During April, May and June there were supply issues with the Sandrena
gel, so much so that the 1mg was not available from my chemist for more than 4
weeks. By the end of June I was running out of gel with no sign of the Sandrena
being available. This resulted in the pharmacy suggesting that they could change
the prescription to a patch. If they did this then I would lose the Sandrena
prescription, which I most definitely didn’t want to do! I made contact with
the doctor’s surgery and asked for a phone call. Having explained the situation,
my GP agreed to send through a prescription for the Evorel 75 patch. This was
the correct patch/dose equivalent of my 1.5mg Sandrena. I was prescribed a
month’s supply and we discussed that it would be there as backup if there were
supply issues with the Sandrena again.
In 2022 - A Year of HRT - Part 3 I will talk more about this and obviously my specialist appointment!
No comments:
Post a Comment